+1 thanks for your help; this got me half way there. I was able to come up with a solution that doesn't use the cryptic - character, also uses gzip compression and allows to target a destination directory.
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macekMay 7 '12 at 17:50

@macek: Note that f - might be required on other operating systems, since most tar versions will try to read from a tape drive otherwise. Reading from stdin by default is GNU-specific.
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grawityMay 7 '12 at 18:39